Sheinbaum designs a cabinet of experienced politicians and where science reaches the highest ranks | Mexican elections 2024

Claudia Sheinbaum, president-elect of Mexico, presented this Thursday part of her government team, which will take office on October 1. These are the men and women who will continue the project started by Andrés Manuel López Obrador for this six-year term that is now ending and which was promised as a historic transformation of the country. But there has not been a lack of own stamp. Sheinbaum has created a new Secretariat (ministry) of Science, Technology, Humanities and Innovation, a notable gesture for a group with which the current president has not maintained the best of relations. In addition, she has placed Alicia Bárcena in the Environment and Natural Resources portfolio, who will leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that she now represents. Both women have extensive academic and senior administrative management resumes. In a short time, what has been missing from the cabinet will be introduced, important portfolios such as Security, National Defense and Navy, but also Education and Health.

The continuity of the policies of this six-year term promised in the electoral campaign is reflected, for the moment, in two names, Alicia Bárcena and Marcelo Ebrard, both of whom have been foreign ministers with López Obrador. Ebrard abandoned that position to seek the presidential candidacy for his party, an internal contest won by Claudia Sheinbaum and which for some time had strained relations between them. He will now be Secretary of Economy, a key department for development with Mexico’s main trading partner, the United States, where there are few hopes of economic prosperity for years to come. Diplomatic by nature, Ebrard will have to deal with the free trade agreement that has been renewed with the United States and Canada.

Also coming from the current administration is Rogelio Ramírez de la O, who will continue to hold the Ministry of Finance, a position that has been known for several days since Sheinbaum reported it in one of the efforts to reassure the markets and recover the price of the currency, which was devalued after the election. In addition, Julio Berdegué will be in charge of agriculture.

The creation of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation, which supersedes the former Mexican Science Council, is the president-elect’s most important gesture. He is a scientist himself, with a degree in physics and a doctorate in environmental engineering. This ministry is a declaration of intentions about his priorities and comes to heal the open wounds of the scientific field during López Obrador’s tenure. Likewise, placing a woman like Bárcena, with an environmentalist background and political experience, in the environment portfolio promises firmness on one of the issues that has caused the most friction during the current six-year term. López Obrador has heavily criticized those “pseudo-environmentalists” who opposed his projects.

Half of the cabinet presented so far is made up of men and women linked to the newly elected president, who have prepared the electoral program with him and who have political experience. This is the case of Juan Ramón de la Fuente, who will occupy the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A surgeon, he is well known among Mexicans, as he was rector of the great public university, UNAM. He has served as Mexico’s representative to the United Nations and has to his credit “up to 20 honorary doctorates”, praised Sheinbaum. With a moderate and negotiating character, he is the man who is in charge of the transfer of powers between the current administration and the next one.

Ernestina Godoy, another woman loyal to the Obradorista project and with a feminist profile, will now be legal adviser, a position of maximum trust for Sheinbaum. The two have worked together in the capital when the elected president was mayor and Godoy was Mexico City’s prosecutor.

The cabinet, which is being presented in doses, needs to be completed with key departments such as the Security Secretariat, National Defense and Navy, all of them concerned in the fight against the violence that the country is experiencing. For security, the name of Omar García Harfuch, who already held that position with Sheinbaum in the capital’s government, has been heard for some time. For the National Defense Secretariat, SEDENA, and the Navy, the names of two military personnel are expected, something traditional in the Mexican government. It is not mandatory, but usually the military has been in charge of these departments. The big change will be that Sheinbaum chose to put a civilian in charge of the military for the first time. The Minister of the Interior is also yet to be appointed, the person who takes over the reins of the country in the absence of the president and who conducts politics in the rest of the state leaders and houses.

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